MARS Executive Committee Minutes Monday February 17, 1997 Present: ExComm: Denise Bennett, Marcella Stark, Amy Wells, Paige Weston. Lise Dyckman, Nancy Bodner, Elliot Kanter, Pat Reiseman. Committee Chairs: Nancy Buchanan, Pat Clark, Nicolas Rossell, Lyman Ross, Jennifer Heise, Linda Friend, Julia Roles, Peggy Seiden. Visitors: Jian Liu, Robert Heriad, Susan Hocker for Users Access to Services Committee) Hal Mendelsohn Meeting was called to order at 9:30 am A.Announcements from RUSA Board meeting 1. RUSA Board rejected the copyright statement. Experimenting with voting via email. Seeking a new deputy Director. Preconference lost about $500.00. Half-day preconferences are as expensive to produce as all day conferences Exploring selling electronic rights to RQ to more vendors. Currently only IAC has rights. 2. Jian Liu--new editor of Messages from Mars was introduced. B. Committee Reports 1. Hot Topics. (Nicolas Roselli) 16 people attended session. Topics covered: services beyond the library, using the Web for instruction, full-text databases. 2. Products and Services: (Linda Friend) Discontinued languishing project on online searching guidelines. Attempting to organize a session/forum at Annual with vendors to discuss pricing models for electronic resources. Also considering on a session on negotiating contracts. Looking to develop an enhanced Web presence for the Committee. 3. User Access to Services (Susan Hocker) Looking for user studies of the Web and developing a publication. Will see if they can gather enough information for a Forum at MidWinter 98. 4. Local Systems and Services.(Lyman Ross) Updating their Web site. Evaluating Web Interfaces to commercial databases. Looking at how easy it is to integrate a product into a Web Site. Long term project--looking to develop a program or publication self-evaluation guides for Web sites. 5.. Managers in Mars--Jennifer Heise, 18 people attended program,"The Ghost in the Machine: Dealing with Culture Conflicts." Topics covered: Standarization, training, working in cross-fucntional teams, learning each other's language, don't try to do it all. Raised issue of relationship between the DG and the Managment Committee. Participants supported have DG follow committe meeting. 6.. Program 98 (Peggy Seiden) Working title: "Who are Our Users and What are They Doing". Seeking speakers who have broad based knowledge of information seeking behaviors, including have someone from AOL or Compuserve talk about what their users do. Hope to follow program with small workshops user surveys. 7. MARS-L (Amy Wells) Currently has 302 subscribers. Addresses will be updated in standard directories of E-conferences. 8.LITA Program--Annual Conference (Denise Bennett) MARS is co-sponsoring. Topic: Universal Access to Tomorrow: Silicon Valley Meets the Library. Speakers John Gage and Paul Saffo with a panel of librarian responders. Planning for 500 participants. 9. Publications (Nancy Buchanan). Reviewed MARS brochure. Text needs to focus on the benefits and opportunities of MARS members. Recommended including committee interest form on the brochure. Draft of new brochure will be posted on MARS-L. 10. RUSA Standards and Guidelines (Nancy Buchanan for Marilyn Grant) Approved Guidelines for newsletters covering genealogical research (?) 9. RUSA membership (Nancy Buchanan) Discussed booth at Annual Conference. ALA is planning a single booth at the entrance to the exhibits so the people can get information about the entire organization. Staffing arrangements have yet to be worked out with the divisions and sections. 10. RUSA Publications (Nancy Buchanan) MOPPS has changed its name to MOUSS (Management of Users Services and Systems). Committee has identified a need to do more soliciting of publications arising out programs and preconferences. Publication sales keep down dues. Reviewing candidates for editor of Update. SECTION REVIEW Report needs to be submitted by the end of Annual Conference (Elliot Kanter). Review of points to consider. 1. Can we doing anything to relax the requirement that committee members attend two conferences a year? We agreed that committee chairs may, at their discretion, cancel committee meetings at a conference. Depending on the nature of their project, committees can accept the contributions of committee members who are unable to attend ( who arrange to be excused to be excused from) committee meetings at conference. 2. What are the proper roles of the Managers in MARS Discussion Group and the Management Committee. do we need both? How to they relate to MOUSS? MOUSS deals with broad issues of managing Reference. MARS deals with specific issues of managing electronic resources. The target audience for the DG group: Web managers, electronic resources coordinators. Should target those individuals who are responsible to managing the electronic resources. Meeting time could be arranged so that Discussion Group follows committee meetings to increase attendance. 3. Do we need a Web Issues Discussion Group. Hot Topics was organized to that latest trends in electronic resources would have a forum. Web issues fall into that category. 4. Are issues surrounding the use of non-text resources in machine-assisted reference work covered adequately by existing MARS groups? Discussion centered on the need for both discussion groups to formulate topics and get topic announced to a broad audience. DG chairs should consider soliciting ExCom for topics. Chair should also take time at the meeting to solicit participants for topics. Chairs might develop a email list participants in the Discussion Group and solicit for topics. 5. Should the Program Planning committee have some kind of oversight responsibility for the quality of AV presentations at MARS Program. Peggy Seiden volunteered to provide materials developed by ACRL that can adapted and put the files of the Program Committee and the MARS handbook. No longer an issue for section review. 6. What is the best way to ensure that program proposals that come before the RUSA Program Committee are as strong as they can be and benefit from the experience of past program planners? Is the chair of the current Program Planning Committee (PPC) the best Representative to the RUSA PPC. Discussed the need for more continuity on Program Committee membership. Chair needs to have served on the committee and to be a veteran of the process. The 1998 Committee consists of individuals who have served on previous MARS and RUSA Program Committees. 7. Should MARS offer to take the MOPSS Catalog Use Committee under its wing? MOPSS reorganization is no longer an issue. May want to look for ways to collaborate with the Catalog Use Committee. 8. How should the duties of the Publications Committee, MARS-L coordinator, and Messages editor best be allocated? Believe this has been all set with the job descriptions that were developed for the new positions. 9. Committee review checklist. Committees are to answer questions. Both topical and administrative committee will comply to the best of their abilities. Meeting adjourned at 11:55 am. Transcribed by Marcella Stark MARS Secretary 4/30/97 Marcella Stark Head, Reference Services Central University Libraries Southern Methodist University Box 0135 Dallas, TX 75275-0135 Tel: (214) 768-2259 Fax: (214) 768-1842 E-mail: mstark@mail.smu.edu